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A BRIEF HISTORY

Simple Geometry was conceived over a game of bocce in 2004 in order to document the then burgeoning electroacoustic improvisation scene in Vancouver, BC. Initial releases were focused on the musical output of the trio, Glass Plates (Jeffrey Allport, Chandan Narayan, & Robert Pedersen), but soon expanded to include non-Canadians. SG is now based in Toronto, with a growing roster of international artists. The label is also interested in promoting the vinyl medium for its releases in limited runs, featuring cover art by local painters and illustrators.

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Information Nina

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NINA

Recorded in Austin, Texas at the 2009 Fusebox Festival, this 10" vinyl captures the final performance of a three day collaboration between electro-acoustic trio NINA -- percussionist Chris Cogburn, electronic musician Bonnie Jones and vocalist Liz Tonne.

Following the success of their initial meeting at No Idea Festival 2008, the trio assembled performing opportunities in Austin (Fusebox Festival) and Toronto (Sound Unbound Festival) to continue researching the sublime quietude, disorienting logic and intimate discord of their collective idiosyncratic poetics.

Chris Cogburn - percussion

Bonnie Jones - electronics

Liz Tonne - voice

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG006 NINA PLACE WERE TREES STAND IN THE WATER

Information Joda

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JODA CLÉMENT

Toronto based artist Joda Clément has been performing and composing experimental music in Canada for over 10 years, developing a unique repertoire of methods for working creatively with sound. His work utilizes analog and acoustic instruments, microphones, found objects and noises recorded from natural and urban environments, investigating hidden properties of sound, space and recording techniques that transcend a distinction between audio and source.

Joda has performed compositions, improvisation and/or exhibited audio/visual installations in numerous Canadian cities and festivals, New York and recently in Europe including appearances at The Music Gallery, MOCCA, Issue Project Room (NY), Reheat (Austria), Suoni Per Il Popolo, Extermination Music Night, Electric Eclectics, MUTEK and Oboro New Media lab as well as live collaborations with Magali Babin, Michael Northam, Hitoshi Kojo, Olivia Block, Bhob Rainey, Bonnie Jones, Kai Fagaschinski, Chris Cogburn, Tomasz Krakowiak and Freida Abtan, for example.

His first album Movement + Rest, was released by Alluvial Recordings in 2005, followed by the collaborative Cherry Beach Project in 2006 with Nigel Craig, on the Belgian Mystery Sea label.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG007 THE PARTY

Information on Chandan Narayan

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CHANDAN NARAYAN

Chandan Narayan (b.1975, Alameda, CA) plays the autoharp. His initial approach to the instrument was guided by complete naivety. Over the years he has refined his non-idiomatic techniques in the hopes of fooling the listener (and himself) with the autoharp as source of acoustic anomalies. He performs and records regularly with the all-acoustic Canadian power trio Glass Plates, the Ann Arbor trio Beak Full of Rubies, and the trans-Canadian trio The Party. He has performed across the US and Canada, sharing stage and living room with the likes of Jeffrey Allport, Tomas Korber, Gunter Muller, Jesse Kudler, Bhob Rainey, Christine Sehnaoui, Angharad Davies, Chris Cogburn, Jonathan Sielaff, and Gust Burns among others. Chandan owns and operates the Simple Geometry label.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG007 THE PARTY

SG005 HAWKER'S DELIGHT

SG004 BENITO CERENO

SG002 EIGHT VIGNETTES FOR SOLO HARP

SG000 GLASS PLATE II

Information on Jeffrey Allport

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JEFFREY ALLPORT

Jeffrey Allport is a Vancouver based percussionist who approaches the physical nature of his chosen instrument through a variety of preparations and implements to liberate a unique palette of sounds. Respecting each carefully extracted tone, thump and scrape in addition to the silence from which they are borne, his exploratory improvisations inhabit minute sound worlds, eschewing the grand gesture. In addition to solo work, Allport has enjoyed a lengthy collaboration with Tim Olive, releasing three CD’s since 1998. He has toured in Canada, the US, Western Europe and Japan. Summer 2007 saw the LP release of his duo with Tetuzi Akiyama, recorded during a small tour of the Northwest in the summer of 2006. Frequently participating in once-only groupings has led him to performing and recording with a wide variety of improvisers from around the world including Annette Krebs, Nate Wooley, Gust Burns, Andrea Neumann, and Keith Rowe.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG007 THE PARTY

SG005 LIVE AT THE WESTERN FRONT

SG004 HAWKER'S DELIGHT

SG002 GLASS PLATE II

Information on Tetuzi Akiyama

Images of Tetuzi Akiyama

TETUZI AKIYAMA

Guitar player

Born in Tokyo, April 13, 1964.

Akiyama specializes in creating music with elements of both primitivism and realism by connecting his own aspirations, in a minimal and straightforward way, to the special instrumental qualities of the guitar. Sometimes delicately and sometimes boldly, he controls sound volumes ranging from micro to macro, in an attempt to convert the body into an electronic entity.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG007 THE PARTY

Information on Chris Cogburn

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CHRIS COGBURN

Percussionist Chris Cogburn is an active performer, curator and organizer, based in Austin, Texas. In performance, Cogburn approaches the physical nature of his chosen instrument with attention to the drum’s subtle and overlooked timbres/textures and an interest in its ability to resonate and transform.

Current projects include NINA, an electro-acoustic trio with avant-vocalist Liz Tonne and Baltimore electronic musician Bonnie Jones; Arena Ladridos, with New Orleans saxophonist Bhob Rainey and Bonnie Jones; and LUCRE, a trio with electronic musicians Bryan Eubanks and Vic Rawlings.

Recent collaborations and projects include: performances in Lima, Peru at VAE11 with electronic musicians Gabriel Castillo and Valentín Yoshimoto; SIP/Watershed, a collaborative and interdisciplinary investigation into the NYC Regional watershed with dancers Jennifer Monson, Maggie Bennett and architect Kate Cahil; and a variety of fortunate projects with artists and musicians in Mexico City and Mérida, Yucatán including Juan Garcia, Alexander Bruck, Fernando Vigueras, Remi Alvarez, Antonio Domínguez and Misha Marks.

Beginning in the summer of 2003, Cogburn has organized an annual festival of improvised music - the No Idea Festival - showcasing a handful of Texas’ premiere creative musicians in collaboration with improvisors from around the US, Europe, Japan, Mexico, Canada and the world. Regarded as “one of the finest creative improvised music festivals in the world” (Paris Transatlantic) No Idea aspires to connect creative musicians, providing the space and time where artistic relationships can flourish, leading towards new areas and approaches in the music. No Idea events have been held in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, New Orleans, Mexico City and Mérida, Yucatán.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG006 NINA PLACE WERE TREES STAND IN THE WATER

Information on Angharad Davies

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ANGHARAD DAVIES

Angharad Davies is a violinist based in London. She is an active performer in contemporary, improvisation and experimental music both as a soloist and within ensembles. Violin studies with Charles-Andre Linale in Dusseldorf and Howard Davies in London have shaped and inspired her own teaching practice.

Since making London her base in 2002 she has developed a specific approach to the violin, extending the sound possibilities of the instrument by attaching and applying objects to the strings or by sounding unexpected parts of the instrument's body. She is dedicated to exploring and expanding sound production on the violin.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG005 HAWKER'S DELIGHT

Information on Liz Tonne

Images of Liz Tonne

LIZ TONNE

Liz Tonne is a vocal artist inspired by the unorthodox use of the human voice. Her work explores the infinite possibilities of the human voice, unmodified by electronic effects and typically without amplification. As an improviser she deconstructs the traditional role of the singer as a story teller or "melodic center", using her voice purely as a sound source. Originally from Pueblo, Colorado, Liz moved to Boston in 1985 where she became immersed in Boston's underground rock scene. In the 1990's she joined Mile Wide, an eclectic art-rock ensemble. whose experiments in improvisation led Tonne to collaborate with other improvisers, notably with Jonathan LaMaster's Saturnalia. Tonne is a member of the undr quartet, formed with James Coleman, Greg Kelley and Vic Rawlings in 1998. She is also a member of The BSC, a large ensemble of Boston improvisers directed by Bhob Rainey.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

Information on Glass Plates

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GLASS PLATES

The pieces on this self-released CDR show a great love for textured sounds: the three scrape and scratch the surface of their instruments, rendering the original instruments beyond their traditional sound. Just very rarely one can recognize the trombone or the surface of trumpet. In each track the texture is filled in creatively. Concentrated playing makes excellent music. Think AMM or Kapotte Muziek...-Frand de Wardd

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG000 GLASS PLATE II

Information on Bonnie Jonnes

Images of Bonnie Jones

BONNIE JONES

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American writer, improvising musician, and performer working primarily with electronic music and text. Born in 1977 in South Korea she was raised by dairy farmers in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD. Bonnie creates improvised and composed text-sound performances that explore the fluidity and function of electronic noise (field recordings, circuit bending) and text (poetry, found, spoken). She is interested in how people perceive, “read” and interact with these sounds and texts given our current technological moment. Bonnie has presented her work in the US, Europe, and Asia and collaborates frequently with writers and musicians including Ric Royer, Carla Harryman, Andy Hayleck, Joe Foster, Andrea Neumann, Liz Tonne and Chris Cogburn. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG006 NINA PLACE WERE TREES STAND IN THE WATER

Information on Benito Cereno

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BENITO CERENO

Benito Cereno is Tim Albro (guitar, radios, electronics), Ian Fraser (laptop, tapes, radios and electronics), Dustin Hurt (trumpet), Jesse Kudler (guitar, electronics, synthesizer, radio, and tapes), and Chandan Narayan (autoharp). Benito Cereno began as an attempt to move beyond typical duo and trio improvising logics and "dialogical" improvising conventions into a space where a relatively large number of acoustic, electro-acoustic, and electronic instruments could function together towards a massed group sound. The quintet is now looking towards personalized compositions as a means to further explore sound arrangement. In fitting with its instrumentation, spread along the spectrum of fully acoustic to fully electronic, Benito Cereno's sound includes warm acoustic tones, austere sine waves, and rough-and-tumble blasts of noise.

The name "Benito Cereno" refers to a short work by Herman Melville, an author who shares a last name with the street on which the five usually play.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG004 BENITO CERENO

Information on Tim Albro

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TIM ALBRO

Born in Worcester, MA in 1980, currently based in Philadelphia, Tim Albro received a BA in English at Wesleyan University. Since Wesleyan, he has done ethnographic work on gospel music in West Philadelphia, composed music for a dance ensemble, as well as participate in the vibrant improvised/creative music community growing in Philadelphia. This work as an improvising/creative musician includes performing on the 12-string electric guitar /w electronics, on the prepared guitar/electronics/radio in the duo HZL, and recent solo work with home built radio transmitters. Current research interests include: the life of milarepa, green anarchism, and good advice.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

Information on Jesse Kudler

Images of Jesse Kudler

JESSE KUDLER

Jesse Kudler, born 1979, creates concrete music on the computer, composes low-tech multi-channel sound works, and improvises on cheap consumer devices: a no-name electric guitar, hand-held cassette recorders, radios and transmitters, various small junk, and pedals/electronics.

Kudler attended public school until Wesleyan University, where he studied music with Ron Kuivila, Alvin Lucier, and a little bit with Anthony Braxton, among others. He eventually became active as an organizer and performer in improvised, experimental, and electronic music, forming a regular duo with fellow student Jonathan Zorn and leading the large electronic improvising ensemble Phil Collins. Kudler has also worked as a recording engineer for various projects.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG004 BENITO CERENO

Information on Ian Frases

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IAN FRASER

Ian M. Fraser is a computer musician working in free improvisation and algorithmic based composition. His primary focus has been on generative structures, pseudo-artificial intelligence, stochastic processes and networking systems for audio/visual output. Current projects include Keroaän, a computer music duo with Reed Evan Rosenberg, an improvised duo with Jesse Kudler as well as his own solo material. He is the co-founder (along with Jesse Kudler) of the Philadelphia Sound Forum.

SIMPLE GEOMETRY RECS

SG007 BENITO CERENO

Information on Simple Geometry

Image of Simple Geometry

ABOUT

Simple Geometry was conceived over a game of bocce in 2004 in order to document the then burgeoning electroacoustic improvisation scene in Vancouver, BC. Initial releases were focused on the musical output of the trio, Glass Plates (Jeffrey Allport, Chandan Narayan, & Robert Pedersen), but soon expanded to include non-Canadians. SG is now based in Toronto, with a growing roster of international artists. The label is also interested in promoting the vinyl medium for its releases in limited runs, featuring cover art by local painters and illustrators.

Cover of the Album

CHANDAN NARAYAN JODA CLEMENT JEFFREY ALLPORT

THE PARTY

Recorded live Winter 2010 at the Mercer Union Gallery (Toronto, Ontario) and Montreal, Quebec

Mastered by Joe Panzner

Cover art by Mat Brown

CD

SG007

$10 + shipping

REVIEWS

That phenomenon of the basically good, solid improv performance edging, just briefly, into something more. Here we have two performances, or portions of same, each lasting about 16 minutes, by Allport (percussion), Clément (analog synth) and Narayan (autoharp), in Toronto and Montreal in 2010. The first piece begins with a drone, a very rich one, soon interrupted by various bangs and clicks, either Allport I suppose, or the others moving about; I tend to enjoy when musicians don't worry about ancillary noise they create simply by adjusting, putting down or otherwise doing "normal" things with items within their reach. It unspools into a quiet rumination, soft moans with scrapes and squeaks before recollecting into a Crypt-ish whirlpool in its last few minutes. There's nothing that particularly stands out, to these ears, but at the same time it satisfies. Sometimes I mentally shrug and say, "OK, fine.", other times I think that, especially were I in the room, I'd be quite well sated, leave the space feeling enhanced.

The disc is designed so that the second track seems to pick up where the first ended, in very AMM-like terrain. They get to a really nice, dry sound, all sand and arid whistling, zero humidity sliding and rubbing. But int he last several minutes, they glide into what, on the surface, doesn't seem to be exceptional: a low moaning drone with the odd deeper tone, augmented by an autoharp strum here, a thin, reedy tone there but also a sudden sense of the space, those random taps emerging, possibly some sounds from the room's exterior, footsteps, a voice, a squeaking door. It blooms into something greater, unexpectedly. I love it, feel transported to the place and time. Well worth the journey.

Recorded in Austin, Texas at the 2009 Fusebox Festival, this 10" vinyl captures the final performance of a three day collaboration between electro-acoustic trio NINA -- percussionist Chris Cogburn, electronic musician Bonnie Jones and vocalist Liz Tonne.

Following the success of their initial meeting at No Idea Festival 2008, the trio assembled performing opportunities in Austin (Fusebox Festival) and Toronto (Sound Unbound Festival) to continue researching the sublime quietude, disorienting logic and intimate discord of their collective idiosyncratic poetics.

Information on the release Hawker's Delight

Cover of the Album

AUDIO SAMPLERS

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Benito Cereno is Tim Albro (guitar, radios, electronics), Ian Fraser (laptop, tapes, radios and electronics), Dustin Hurt (trumpet), Jesse Kudler (guitar, electronics, synthesizer, radio, and tapes), and Chandan Narayan (autoharp). Benito Cereno began as an attempt to move beyond typical duo and trio improvising logics and "dialogical" improvising conventions into a space where a relatively large number of acoustic, electro-acoustic, and electronic instruments could function together towards a massed group sound. The quintet is now looking towards personalized compositions as a means to further explore sound arrangement. In fitting with its instrumentation, spread along the spectrum of fully acoustic to fully electronic, Benito Cereno's sound includes warm acoustic tones, austere sine waves, and rough-and-tumble blasts of noise.

The name "Benito Cereno" refers to a short work by Herman Melville, an author who shares a last name with the street on which the five usually play.

TETUZI AKIYAMAJEFFREY ALLPORT

LIVE AT THE WESTERN FRONT

REVIEWS

The Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama performs an improvised set as a duo with Canadian percussionist Jeffrey Allport on July 1, 2006. This recording is of the first and only time these two well-regarded improvisers have ever played together. Living on opposite sides of the Pacific, this show became an opportunity for Allport and Akiyama to each perform some of their most advanced techniques in improvised music with a player whose style was truly compatible. Allport approaches every side of his drum, the rim, the snares, the steel clamps, and of course, the skin to produce a challenging repertoire of sounds that defy the drum's gambit, segues from Tibetan drones to electronic clicks and cuts, distant steamships to nearby popcorn. Akiyama's preternatural improvisations along the neck and body of his guitar meditate patiently on each bluesy sound, almost as if his fingers were playing along the surface of a slow-moving river. Every note that Akiyama plays becomes a sensational interruption causing ripples, splashes, and oxbows in the flow of the music. Performed live at a sold-out Western Front, Vancouver's oldest and most significant artist-run venue, Akiyama and Allport propose a rich new vocabulary for music. Two tracks on vinyl mastered by Toshimaru Nakamura. This LP documents an unprecedented collaboration between two modern masters of far left improvisation. -Lee Henderson

Information on the release Eight Vignettes

Cover of the Album

AUDIO SAMPLERS

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TRACK II
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TRACK III
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EIGHT VIGNETTES FOR SOLO AUTOHARP

REVIEWS

Chandan Narayan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science of the University of Pennsylvania researching acoustic phonetics and also an expert in Sanskrit, manages to find time to freely improvise on the autoharp as well. A member of Glass Plates (with Jeffrey Allport and Robert Pederson) as well as a collaborator with violinist Angharad Davies, Narayan here presents eight brief improvisations on an instrument you don’t come across to frequently in this neck of the woods, the autoharp.

The pieces are entirely acoustic although each is approached using extended techniques of one sort or another. There’s more bowing and scraping than there is plucking and Narayan seems to enjoy particularly serrated sounds, the sort of result you might derive from drawing a nail rasp across the strings. Occasionally, echoes of its more traditional resonances can be heard, hanging ghostlike in the air for a couple of seconds but they’re quickly dispersed by the more earthly tones rising from worried metal and wood. Sometimes, the technique employed gets in the way of the piece as such, obscuring sounds themselves, attracting too much attention; other times, it passes unnoticed. It’s these latter moments, as heard on the first track (all untitled), that are the most successful, where the music just floats out there, a bit mysteriously. We’re not in Laraaji territory by any means, more akin to that inhabited by Ms. Davies’ brother, albeit without an e-bow. Another musician I found myself thinking of was Alfredo Costa Monteiro, who demonstrates a similar brand of visceral, physical attachment to his instrument. For myself, about half the time I thought the miniatures worked, about half I felt there was something lacking although I will say that the more I listened, the more I tended to fall under their spell. That missing something may simply be a collaborator and I’d be very interested to hear Narayan working in tandem with one or more fellow musicians; I get the feeling he’d be a fine listener.

As is, “Eight Vignettes for Solo Autoharp” is more in the nature of a sampler laying out propositions from Narayan, observations on the nature of his autoharp, on its own inherent phonetics. It’s an intriguing set by a musician from whom I’ll be curious to hear more.-Brian Olewnick (Bagatellen)

Information on the release Glass Plates II

Cover of the Album

GLASS PLATES

GLASS PLATES II

Robert Pedersen - valve trombone

Jeffrey Allport - percussion

Chandan Narayam - autoharp

No Amplification

Artwork by Lief Hall

Recorded by Allport 2005

Recorded in Strathcona, Vancouver, BC

3" CD-R (edn of 50; sold out)

REVIEWS

The pieces on this self-released CDR show a great love for textured sounds: the three scrape and scratch the surface of their instruments, rendering the original instruments beyond their traditional sound. Just very rarely one can recognize the trombone or the surface of trumpet. In each track the texture is filled in creatively. Concentrated playing makes excellent music. Think AMM or Kapotte Muziek...-Frand de Wardd